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Administrators aren't privy to the analysis teachers receive using the TeachFX app.

Eighty five percent teacher talk for meeven for an interview that makes me think: yikes!

Jamie Poskin was referring to the TeachFX analysis of the interview hed just completed with Forbes. According to the app, he spent 85% of the call talkingwhich seems appropriate when answering a reporters questions. But had he been teaching English to a class of ninth graders, that figure would be higher than it should be, according to decades of research on student learning.

Poskin is the founder and CEO of TeachFX, an artificial intelligence-powered app that records teachers lessons and gives them personalized feedback about what they do well and where they could improve. How much time did they spend talking compared with their students? Did they ask too few open-ended questions? Did they use too many academic or technical words? Did they pause for an adequate amount of time after posing a question? TeachFX will tell them.

A former high school English and math teacher, Poskin, 38, started the company in 2016 and signed on his first customers during the 2018-19 school year. Like many fledgling businesses, TeachFX was nearly snuffed out by the Covid-19 pandemic, but today the company is partnered with about 70 school districts and is on track to book about $2.5 million in revenue this year. Last week, TeachFX announced it raised $10 million in a Series A funding round led by Reach Capital.

TeachFX makes its money by selling yearlong subscriptions to schools and districts. The company doesnt advertise its prices, but a small school typically pays about $10,000 for a subscription, a medium-sized school pays about $20,000, and a large school pays about $30,000.

With a subscription, all teachers at the school get access to the app, which works on their smartphones or laptops and is designed to appeal to them through its ease of use and confidentiality.

Its super easy for a K-12 teacher in an in-person classroomyoure pressing a button. You can even schedule it to start when you want it to start, and then you get feedback right there on your phone, Poskin said.

Significantly, teachers own their data. Individual TeachFX reports cannot be accessed by other teachers or administrators. But administrators can see aggregated numbers for the entire school or district.

Lets say a school is focused on getting more open ended questions asked in their classrooms. Well show that as an aggregated thing, but never on an individual teacher level because we just philosophically believe its so important for anybodys learning and growth that you feel safe doing it, Poskin said.

Beyond business success, scaling the app quickly is important to Poskin in part because he believes AI is coming to teaching and hed rather it be done with his teacher-confidential approach. I put a lot of pressure on myself for this company to be successful, because I just think if we arent successful, someones going to come along later and do this as a performance management, teacher evaluation tool, Poskin said. That would just be so horrible. Its the last thing teachers need.

The CEO has also made a point of getting teachers unions involved with the subscription early on to pre-empt any negative assumptions about the product. The California Teachers Association Instructional Leadership Corps was one of TeachFXs first customers. The risk is if theyre the last ones to hear about it theyre going to assume that this is some secret way to spy on teachers, Poskin said.

Covid-19 almost killed Poskins business. When the pandemic first caused schools to pivot to online learning, TeachFX did not have an online version of its product. It only worked for live, in-person classes. Poskin and his team quickly developed a version of TeachFX that worked with Zoom lessons, and assumed that at least for the 2020-21 school year, no one would be interested in it.

Our business model is basically reliant on that intrinsic motivation from teachers. I was like I just dont think thats going to be there during a pandemic. Are teachers who are teaching online for the first time really going to say Id love to get analytics about how good of a teacher I am.

But with each federal stimulus package, schools received one-time funding to improve teaching and learning during the pandemic. It needed to be spent quicklyall stimulus funds must be spent by the end of 2023, according to Javaid Siddiqi, president and CEO of The Hunt Institute, a public education policy nonprofit in North Carolina. Virtual coaching was one area where schools decided to spend their cash.

This is once-in-a-generation funding that came from the feds, and these are the types of things that are presented as options to spend those dollars, Siddiqi said.

The edtech industry saw investment and demand swell during the pandemic. According to Crunchbase data, edtech received $14.6 billion in investment in 2020 and $20 billion in 2021, up from $7 billion in 2019.

When the stimulus funding does run out, schools that wish to maintain contracts with TeachFX or similar companies can do so using Title II funding, which the Department of Education earmarks for programs that improve teaching quality and effectiveness, Siddiqi said.

As TeachFX seeks to expand its customer base, Poskin is considering looking for clients outside of the education world. One of their biggest customers is BetterLesson, a professional development company for teachers that also works with corporate coaches. TeachFX is also looking to work with more colleges, especially those that offer online courses.

I imagine this future where when university rankings come out, the student talk percentage is one of those foundational metrics that everybodys reporting on because its what matters for learning, Poskin said. Thats a big vision.

Read more:
This Artificial Intelligence App Wants To Make You A Better Teacher - Forbes